The Chamber of Horror was the fourth level of the Tomb of the Nine Gods.1 It held the tombs of the Trickster Gods Unkh and Shagambi, the crypt of Napaka, the last queen of Omu, and the Mirror of Life Trapping in which the Watcher Savriel Tirinath had been held for fifty years.23456 The party reached it on the evening of the fourteenth of Eleasis, 1492 DR, lost Ersklan Ghostfang there the same evening, and went down from it to the fifth level late in the night of the fifteenth.137
Acererak's fourth warning, read by the party in the gargoyle room
Death to fire, dine or drown, precious air, and falling sand.
The army sleeps in silence.
The mirror holds twelve.
Find the iron scepter’s twin.
The maze holds the key8
Description
The level lay between the third level of the Tomb and the fifth. A spiral staircase from the third level came down into its throne room.1 A shaft in the gargoyle room dropped to the fifth level.79
The level held two mazes. One was the magical, shifting maze of Unkh’s tomb, and the other was the Maze of Death, near the mirror room.34 A rumbling from the machine of the fifth level had been audible to the party for a day before it went down.7
Inhabitants
Undead painters, the zombie artists, worked on the walls of the throne room. They were blind.16
Ten minotaur skeletons guarded Unkh’s tomb, and a living minotaur stalked its maze. The Goliath monk Raiketsu was trapped in the same maze by its magic, and had been lost in the Tomb for a length of time he could not measure.310 He later said that it had been long enough that he did not know what had become of his previous party.9
Savriel Tirinath, called Savi, a Watcher of the Cobalt Lattice, was a prisoner in the Mirror of Life Trapping. She had snakes for hair, purple-black vipers, and wore old, pristine armor.4 Fang had broken free of the same mirror before the party met him.11
Four gargoyles took a toll in the gargoyle room.85 Forty-eight terracotta soldiers stood asleep in ranks in Shagambi’s tomb, their swords an inch from their scabbards.5 King, an awakened lizard who spoke Druidic, hid in the mouth of a devil face in a hallway. He had been the trap-springer of The Company of the Yellow Banner and had been abandoned when the Company died.5
The lich Withers came to the level with a force of Tomb Dwarves and Tomb Guardians, which were his constructs.1012 Snib, his Underclerk, was a small, desiccated dead clerk who wore spectacles without glass and kept a ledger.56
The corpse of Queen Napaka lay in her crypt and spoke to the party.6 The spirits of two Trickster Gods rested in the level’s tombs: Unkh, the flail snail, in the Robe of Scintillating Colors, and Shagambi in a Canaith mandolin.106
Notable locations
- The throne room, where the zombie artists painted murals. Acererak’s throne stood in it and held an iron scepter.19
- The serpent door, a door adorned with serpents that opened when blood was given to the serpents’ mouths.3
- Unkh’s tomb, a main chamber with a sarcophagus that changed color, and a magical, shifting maze in which colored keys were hidden. Taking a key returned the finder to the main chamber.310
- The minotaur holding cages.8
- The mirror room, a mirrored chamber twenty feet square with a silver floor, reached by a side passage that smelled of stale air and silver. An eight-foot freestanding silver mirror stood in it, the Mirror of Life Trapping.45
- The Maze of Death, at whose center lay the Black Opal Crown.4
- The grandfather clock room. The room had no dust in it, as if time continuously washed it clean, and anything in it when the clock struck the hour aged as if ten thousand years had passed. A pearl, the Navel of the Moon, swung on the pendulum behind an invisible, locked door.8
- The gargoyle room, where four gargoyles took a toll of one copper, one silver, one gold and one platinum coin for each person. The room was trapped. Acererak’s fourth warning was written there, and the shaft to the fifth level opened from it.859
- The lizard den, a bluff hallway with a gaping devil face.5
- The elemental cells, a series of trials that led to Shagambi’s tomb.5
- Shagambi’s tomb, which held the terracotta army, teleport runes and the coffin of the god.56
- Napaka’s crypt, a glittering crypt beyond a western arch. It held a golden sun that fired rays once and was then inert.6
History
The throne room
On the evening of the fourteenth of Eleasis, Taenae, Vogal, Vonara, Glade, Inete and the Human rogue Ersklan Ghostfang, called Fang, came down the spiral staircase into the throne room. The zombie artists were painting murals on its walls. The murals showed the party’s own recent near-deaths on the upper levels and the deaths of the Company of the Yellow Banner. Acererak, whom the party knew as the Architect, had been watching and recording everything.1
Studying the murals, the party learned that Karagos had been murdered by Acererak, as the nine Trickster Gods and the people of Omu had been.3 Who Karagos was is not recorded.
Unkh’s tomb and the death of Fang
The serpent door barred the way deeper into the level. Vogal and Vonara bled themselves into the serpents’ mouths, and the door ground open.3
The party entered Unkh’s tomb and split up to search the maze for its keys. Shortly afterward ten minotaur skeletons charged. Some fought the party members inside the maze and others attacked those left outside it. Glade found the green key and was teleported back to the main chamber. The others spent a long time in the maze without finding the right path. Fang eventually found a gold key.3
With the fight still going on, Glade tried to put the green key into the sarcophagus while it was glowing purple. The sarcophagus rejected the key, which vanished from his hand and returned to the maze. The party’s coordination then collapsed. Fang was cut off and fought the minotaur skeletons alone. Vonara and Glade revived him twice with healing. He fell a third time under the skeletons’ bone axes and was killed. He was the first member of the party to be killed in the Tomb.3
Raiketsu and the minotaur skeletons
That night the party was still scattered in the maze. Vonara and Glade found each other and were attacked by the living minotaur. Taenae and Vogal were lost, and each came separately on the body of an Omuan child. Taenae, who knew that Vogal collected such things, took the child’s kneecaps to give to him.10
Inete rejoined the party and went into the maze to help. Where she had been during the first fight is not recorded. In the maze she found Raiketsu. The two of them joined Vonara and Glade, and Raiketsu crushed the living minotaur. The four then found the purple key and were teleported back to the main chamber.10
Just before they returned, Vogal found the blue key and was teleported to the main chamber alone. The minotaur skeletons waiting there fell on him and struck him down, and he got back to his feet in his rage. The others arrived as he was making his stand. Inete, Glade and Vonara fought with magic and Raiketsu with his fists, and together they destroyed every remaining skeleton. Taenae was still in the maze.10 How she left it is not recorded.
The party had Vogal put the gold key into the sarcophagus. The mechanism clicked and granted him the Charm of Treasure Sense. With it he at once found Unkh’s hidden vessel, the Robe of Scintillating Colors. He claimed it and attuned to it, and Unkh inhabited him from then on.10
The contract with Withers
The party made camp in the main chamber of Unkh’s tomb under Leomund’s tiny hut, and Glade took the first watch. About two hours into the rest, Tomb Dwarves and Tomb Guardians arrived and surrounded the dome.10
In the early morning of the fifteenth of Eleasis the Dwarves and Guardians stopped their assault and formed flanking rows, and Withers came out of the darkness. He pointed at one of his own Tomb Dwarves, and without a word it turned to dust. He listed the party’s offenses: burning his office, butchering his Dwarves, damaging seals and triggering the apotheosis sequence of the fourth level. He said that he had not come to punish them and wished to make a deal.12 What the apotheosis sequence was is not recorded.
Withers wanted the beholder Belchorzh, who lived on the third level, dead. In exchange he offered a safe rest of eight hours, safe passage through the third and fourth levels, and everything in the beholder’s hoard. The contract was magically binding. Under it the party could not lie directly to Withers or attack him without his permission, the party owed him one future favor within his administrative authority, and he owed the party one. During the negotiation he alluded to Takhesis Calva and said that the party’s companion was “below.” He also called the Paladin, Savriel, a “Watcher,” a member of a monastic order dedicated to keeping the planes safe.12
The whole party agreed and signed the parchment in blood. Taenae returned Withers’s skeletal bird to him, and told him that she liked him and saw a glimmer of good beneath his servitude to Acererak. Withers accepted the gesture. He then called off his forces, and the party rested for eight hours without interruption. During the rest Vonara smoked cigarettes to steady her nerves, and Inete studied the Omuan language and recreated a partial dictionary of it. Withers then guided the party back up to the third level.12 There Belchorzh told the party that a Mirror of Life Trapping stood on the fourth level and that Savriel was inside it.13
The Mirror of Life Trapping
At midday, after killing Belchorzh, Taenae, Vonara, Glade, Inete and Raiketsu came back down to the fourth level and found the side passage to the mirror room. Vogal’s part in this stretch is not recorded. A woman with snakes for hair was pressed against the glass of the mirror. Taenae connected her to a painting the party had taken from the beholder’s vault, inscribed “A Trapped Watcher”. The party feared her appearance, debated at length what to do, and made plans to detain her with magic as soon as she was out.4
Glade touched the glass. The mirror tried to draw his soul inside, and he resisted it. He then destroyed the mirror with a sorcerous burst. The explosion threw silver shrapnel across the room and wounded Glade, Taenae and Vonara.4 What became of any other prisoners of the mirror is not recorded.
Savriel fell to the floor gasping for air, her vipers sluggish and defensive. She asked for water, and Taenae gave it to her with create or destroy water. She spoke with an archaic accent and an aristocratic bearing. When the party told her the year, she learned that she had lost fifty years. She named herself a Watcher of the Cobalt Lattice, and the party’s suspicion gave way to a cautious alliance. She traveled with the party from then on.4
The Maze of Death
The party went into the Maze of Death, reached its center and saw the Black Opal Crown there. It left the crown where it lay.4 The crown was next recorded on Savriel’s brow when she entered the Cradle the following afternoon, and it was lost with her there.1415 How it left the maze is not recorded.
During this exploration Taenae cursed herself with a golden skull that the party had looted earlier. The skull came to life, floated behind her from then on, and insulted her at every opportunity.4
Savriel asked to visit the place where Fang had died. The party gave her the ashes it had collected from his death in the maze.4 How his body came to be ashes is not recorded.
The grandfather clock
That afternoon Taenae, Vogal, Glade, Inete and Raiketsu went to the grandfather clock room. The clock read 12:44. Inete found the invisible door over the pendulum compartment, and Glade dispelled the invisibility. Taenae’s detect magic showed strong transmutation magic in the pearl on the pendulum. Inete opened the lock with knock, and the party took the pearl and left the room before the clock struck one. On the hour a flower of Taenae’s was exposed to the room, and it withered at once.8
The pearl caused anything it touched that was not undead to age rapidly. It affected Taenae’s bag of holding and spoiled the party’s rations. The party left it in the minotaur holding cages, surrounded by bones.8
Fang’s grave
Vonara had stayed back to keep watch on Savriel, whom she did not yet trust.4 While the others were at the clock, the two went back to the maze where Fang had died, and Savriel asked Vonara to stand watch while she performed a Watcher’s rite to lay his spirit to rest. During the rite she found that his soul was not at rest. It was caught in a current that pulled it down toward the bottom of the Tomb. Everyone who died in the Tomb was held conscious and suffering and was slowly dragged down to feed what lay at the bottom.8
Vonara realized that the Soulmonger had to be destroyed to free these souls, and the geas that bound her to Valindra Shadowmantle tightened in her chest. Valindra reminded her that she was to deliver the Soulmonger intact if her undead parents were to remain “managed,” and said that destroying it would not free her parents and would likely send them into the current with Fang. Vonara then told Savriel of the geas. Savriel promised that they would find a way to break it, so that Vonara would not have to choose between her parents and the world.8
Later Taenae thanked Vonara before the party for making the bargain with Valindra, which had protected the party and Alice. She said that she wanted to help Vonara break it and did not know how.8
The tripwires and the gargoyle room
Moving further into the level, the party found a tripwire behind it. Its members accused one another of being a doppelganger. No one suspected Savriel. Inete was nervous and could not give the party’s password, “Yurrrr.” Each then offered a memory as proof. Glade recalled blowing up the party’s boat on a river with earth tremor. Vogal brought up a night with Taenae. Vonara withheld information. Taenae affirmed her soul bond with Alice. Raiketsu pointed out that he had only just been found in the maze. Inete spoke of her parents’ death in a fire and the fear it had left her with.8
The party then entered the gargoyle room and read Acererak’s fourth warning there without leaving the room, which avoided its trap.8 That evening it paid the gargoyles’ toll in full, without cheating and without a fight.5
As the coins fell, Snib arrived with a folded writ under Withers’s seal. He attached himself to the party “for assessment purposes” and wrote down everything it did. The party chose not to fight him while it stood inside Withers’s domain.5
Deeper in, the party found a second, fresh tripwire, shoddily rigged, in a part of the level it had already cleared. The doppelganger theory returned, strengthened by the implication in the Yellow Banner’s journal that the Company had had a shapeshifter in its ranks. The party discussed it at length and did not solve it.5
In the lizard den Taenae found King hiding in the mouth of the devil face. She promised him a return to the surface, and he rode with her from then on. He was terrified of the Tomb Dwarves’ corridors.5 He left the Tomb with the survivors and went back to the jungle.1516
The elemental trials and Shagambi’s tomb
The party examined the first elemental cell at length. Vogal went in alone. He passed the trials and crept through Shagambi’s tomb without waking the terracotta soldiers. He then chose to step on a teleport rune. It turned him into a quipper and dropped him onto the floor of the mirror room, where he suffocated as a fish and was returned to his own body.5
Vonara followed, also alone, and also passed the trials. In the tomb she cast Yolande’s regal presence, which woke the army. The soldiers attacked her, and her Cloak of Displacement turned their blows. The spell then destroyed all forty-eight of them where they stood. They were the sleeping army of Acererak’s warning.85 Vonara’s own rune turned her into a bat and sent her to the mirror room. Vogal, who was hungry, caught the bat out of the air to eat it and killed it, and Vonara returned to her own form. The two made their way back, and the rest of the party was let through the solved cells.5
That night the party opened Shagambi’s coffin. A music box inside played a lullaby. The party took the Hexagon Skeleton Key, the fourth of the Skeleton Keys it held; the Canaith mandolin, which was fated to turn to dust if it left the Tomb; five moonstones worth 50 gold pieces each; the music box, worth 250; and 200 gold pieces. Raiketsu touched the mandolin. Six shadow serpents coiled out of it, a voice said, “I am not your enemy,” and Shagambi inhabited him from then on.6
At some point that night Taenae took the vessel of Nangnang, a Grung egg, out of the bag in which it had been kept, and forced Nangnang and Papazotl, who possessed her, to fight for her. Nangnang won and cast Papazotl out.6 Where on the level this happened is not recorded.
The mural of Fang
Snib told the party, “Her Majesty will see you,” and the party went with him toward the throne room. A new painting was on the wall, its pigment still wet. It showed the maze, the horned skeletons, and Fang going down beneath them, alone. One of the blind artists was still adding red. Savriel read the painting once and said, “They made art of him. Fine. I will make a ruin of them.” Snib urged the party to disrupt an artist as a token of loyalty to Her Majesty and looked toward the one painting Fang. The party refused.6
Napaka’s crypt
Snib then led the party through the western arch into Napaka’s crypt and set off the golden sun himself, saying, “I only wanted to see the light.” Savriel shouted for the party to get behind her and planted her shield, and a thin wall of gold light took the rays meant for those behind her. She was scorched and stayed on her feet. She said, “The armor took it.” It visibly had not. Taenae poured created water over the glowing armor to cool it, and the steam showed how badly Savriel was hurt.6
Snib flailed, teleported and invoked his tenure. Vogal killed him with a thrown javelin. A Tomb Dwarf then slid a note from Withers across the floor with its boot. It read in part, “The writ is revoked. He is no longer staff. He is, as of this writing, inventory.” It added that the accounts between Withers and the party stood as written, one owed and one owing. Snib’s ledger went to Inete. It held tallies of the traps’ kills going back decades, a file on the party with a projected cause of death for each member, a page on the end of the Yellow Banner, and the line “Deliveries: lower floors. Recipient: THE MOTHERS.”6 The ledger rotted away on the fifth level the next day.17
As the party stripped the crypt, a clean, high wind moved through it and tugged at the last threads of Asharra’s blessing, and the dead queen stirred. Napaka spoke in a dry, imperious voice. She told the party of her place in Omu’s line of queens and of what the Tomb had made of her city. She told it that the Black Opal Crown was an ancient, unholy artifact tied to the Yuan-ti, and that by legend it could, on a scaled brow, wake Dendar the Night Serpent or open a gateway to her prison. She said that the adamantine scepter in her hands existed to destroy a construct that bore her name, and that the Skull Chalice of Ch’gakare, a relic of Omu’s royal authority and martial conquest, waited somewhere below. The party did not tell her that her line had survived. Among themselves its members made the connection to Princess Mwaxanaré, and they left the crypt meaning to gather Omu’s relics for the living heir.6
The party looted the crypt in full. As the scepter left Napaka’s hands her corpse breathed out a necrotic pall, which wounded the party. The haul was the real adamantine scepter, which was light and carried an aura of transmutation, a jade crocodile key, a jewelry box worth 1,500 gold pieces, and a necklace of fireballs. The necklace was cursed. No one in the party inspected or identified it.6
The descent and the twin scepter
Late that night the party lowered itself by rope down the shaft from the gargoyle room and landed on the fifth level.7
In the small hours of the sixteenth of Eleasis, Vonara flew back up the shaft to the gargoyle room and went on to the throne room. She and Raiketsu took the twin scepter from Acererak’s throne, which answered the fourth warning. The blind artists went on with their work undisturbed. Back on the fifth level, Inete’s identify confirmed that the scepter from the crypt was the real one and that the piece from the throne was a decoy of cold iron with an adamantine head. The construct named for Napaka was a stone juggernaut on the fifth level. The party met it that night and did not use the scepter against it. The jade crocodile key opened a crawlway on the fifth level, and the party kept it.9
Destruction
No later visit to the level is recorded. It was destroyed with the rest of the Tomb before dawn on the seventeenth of Eleasis, when Omu sank and became a caldera.1516
Appendix
Appearances
Session 74 to Session 77 · Session 79 to Session 82 · Session 84
Mentioned in Session 71, Session 78, Session 83, Session 85, Session 86, Session 87, Session 89 and Session 90.